New Village Press is proud to partner with Arbor Café to present the first in the Insurgent Learning Series: Dialog for Occupy Spring!

Please join us on May 15 at 6:30 pm at the Arbor Café, located at 4210 Telegraph Ave (between 42nd St & 43rd St) in Oakland, where activists Francisco “Pancho” Ramos Stierle, Adelaja Simon, and Reverend Phil Lawson will discuss “The Ahimsa (R)evolution: Ways to Disobey with Great Love.”

Reverend Phil Lawson is a veteran Civil Rights activist who serves on the Organizing Committee for the National Council of Elders. As a community organizer, Phil has been engaged in issues concerning immigrants, human and sexual freedom, a just wage for workers, and economic development. He has been hosting a study group on Nonviolent Social Change with interfaith ministers of Occupy Oakland.

Adelaja Simon stopped cooperating with business school to become a permaculturist. He lives in the Canticle Farm community in East Oakland, where he knows, grows, and loves local food and is an extraordinary singer and vegan cook. Adelaja focuses his activism in human rights, environmental regeneration, restorative justice, peacebuilding, urban agriculture, and a vibrant gift economy.

Pancho Ramos Stierle (and Adelaja, his housemate,) were arrested November 14, 2011, during the police raid on Occupy Oakland, while both were meditating. Raised in Mexico City, Pancho came to UC Berkeley to study astrophysics in the PhD program but stopped cooperating with the university when he realized his research was supporting an institution that actively proliferates nuclear weapons. He faces a deportation hearing this May and brings unique views about his own arrest and the Occupy movement.

— It is time to disobey with Great Love. Do it beautifully and be informed. —